


Atmospheric Pressure is Only a Thing When You Need it to Be

by CityofJade, madalinacatarina



Series: Eternity AU [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Case Fic, Faeries - Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 13:25:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13614279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CityofJade/pseuds/CityofJade, https://archiveofourown.org/users/madalinacatarina/pseuds/madalinacatarina
Summary: You are a miracle of nature, his mother said to him once, cupping a fever bright cheek. Your own body fights against your existence, and yet here you are.He remembers her words when his head pounds and orange tinted blood congeals over his lips. When the earth sways beneath his feet and his chest tightens with the lack of air. Once, the memory had brought him comfort. Now he wonders if perhaps she was wrong. That he wasn't a miracle, but a curse, an abomination. A mess of random otherworldly attributes sewn up in hardly human skin. After all, here he is, barely an adolescent, and already unraveling at the seams; his ancestors had once lived for centuries. He wonders if he'll even reach adulthood.





	Atmospheric Pressure is Only a Thing When You Need it to Be

**Author's Note:**

> Ed and Al are descended from faeries and the world is only slightly oblivious. That's all you need to know.
> 
> This is still a work in progress, this is not even the complete chapter I'm uploading, but I need something to encourage myself to finish this. Chapters may be edited multiple times after posting, the story may change. I am a mess and this is too, read at your own risk. Ideas and constructive criticism welcomed.

When Edward was born it was midwinter and the doctor could not arrive on time. He fell into his father's hands and amidst his wails the home creaked and cried along with him. Early in the morning, swathed in the pitch of night the doctor would arrive and think that perhaps, somehow, the howling storm had caused him to perpetually lean so as to keep his balance. Why else did the hallways tilt around him and the wood of the floors ripple beneath his feet?

  
He forgot about it in favor of a healthy baby and a happy mother. Though he did wonder about the strange hues in his hair, his eyes. Babies often had blue eyes at birth, but did they have firelight flecks in the iris? Did they watch you with such unnerving focus? Somehow, he could not remember. He couldn't remember a lot of things that night. And every time he would turn his gaze to the swaddled bundle the father was there, gentle-voiced and insistent that the child was fine, attend to his wife instead.

  
He left confused and stumbling, hardly sure of where he was going. By the time he woke up again that evening he could not remember that night having happened at all.

  
A year later, he was back. It was spring this time, and the blossoms fought for position in his hair. Never had there been an easier birth. The mother was pale but smiling and the fluttering father always seemed to know what was needed before it was needed. The birds were still singing by the time a single cry and a whimper marked the arrival of a new life in the word.

  
"He's human." The father breathed over his shoulder, and he would have asked what in the blazes he meant if the statement hadn't sent icy spiders skittering over his spine.

  
For whatever it was supposed to have meant, it was true regardless. The child was human, wide-eyed and pink-cheeked, a fine feathering of caramel fuzz adorning the tiny head. He checked the tiny toes and the crinkling fingers and when he looked up from measuring each little femur he found himself frozen in golden eyes.

  
"Edward, how did you escape your crib?" Van Hohenheim had asked, and he _knew_ that child didn't he? Hohenheim and the child had disappeared immediately after, but still, a fuzzy memory of gold-flecked blue flickered on the edges of remembrance. He did not know from where he had seen those eyes, or why they were brought to mind when he saw this new child's gold, but they brought with them a chill reminiscent of winter and a vision of warping wood floors.

  
He left soon after, unsettled and uncertain. "I'll be by later to check up on the pair." He told the father, who had then settled a gentle hand on his weary shoulder and said, quite seriously, "You will forget completely."

  
"No," He had laughed nervously. "You will find that I won't." And by the time he had made it to the end of the road, he couldn't remember Trisha Elric ever having given birth, despite it happening twice.

  
This was the only mark these two boys left on the world for years to come. A doctor who forgot becoming the sole witness to their existence. It was better that way for many reasons, but most importantly, as Edward would learn later, it was the only way. They were not allowed to exist, and people knowing would only cause trouble.

  
They, or rather _he_ , was an abomination. An impossibility. A danger. A half-human soul with the power to level the world and not nearly enough of the consequences. Alphonse was as well but in not quite the same way. His body was human, and his soul was _almost_ entirely that as well. Should the wrong sort ever chance upon him he would, in all likelihood, be overlooked as the usual sort of scum that the other side of their family viewed the world as. But Ed, well, he was a different story.

  
It was a shame he did not learn how to hide until it was too late.

 

 


End file.
